It's hard for me to listen to new music. I have to force myself to put time into listening to anything new.

It's interesting to be old — I'm almost 69 years old — and to experience my mind as new things happen now and with all my memories of what I did and what I felt in the past. One of the biggest differences I see in myself is openness to new music.

In the 1960s, I had endless openness to new music and was always tuning into the radio to find things. Hearing them once — I remember the first time I heard "I Got You, Babe" (it was on a station that only came in late at night from Fort Wayne, Indiana) — I could instantly bond and know this was good, this matters to me. I would read about music that hadn't been released in America yet and long to get a chance to hear it. I had a photograph of Cat Stevens from a magazine pinned to my bedroom wall at a time when it was not yet possible for me to hear his music.

These days, I still listen to Cat Stevens. In fact, I have one song ("Morning Has Broken") that I play every day. That's how grounded I am in the old things. What I love most is what is repeated.

So I had a hard time trying to be interested in the list my son John made of his "Top 100" songs from the past decade. It's a very carefully and individualistically curated list and the best of an entire decade, and it's my son and I ought to care that a decade is about to end (in 17 days!). But it's so hard for me to begin to listen to something new and to continue. The only way I can open up to it is to listen multiple times. Maybe on the 5th or 6th time, I could bond and feel that this is good and this matters to me. I need the repetition, but how to get to the stage where it is repetition?

One thing is TikTok! When I want physical and mental rest and recreation, I love to sit back and scroll through whatever the TikTok app decides to serve up as "For You." Often, the very short videos have a musical soundtrack, and some audio clips are used repeatedly. So a snippet of music can make it into my head and become liked by my ancient brain.

Here's a good example. I'll just give you 2 videos using the same song clip (which has been used in many other videos, collected here, with embedded video at the top giving you the entire song). The audio clip has been used over 1.5 million times, and I'm giving you 2 from the same person, which says something more about me and repetition:





Here's an example of another video using the clip.



Maybe what I like so much is the sound of a bassoon, and what I liked in "I Got You, Babe" was the oboe.

Isn't a bassoon an oboe that has grown old?

Should I put a Cosmo Scheldrake album in my iPhone so I can bond with it? Does Cosmo Sheldrake deserve that kind of access?